Saturday, April 01, 2017

Song #84: "Coming Up (Live At Glasgow)"--Paul McCartney & Wings (1979)

It was Monday, December 17th, 1979. The place was Glasgow, Scotland. Paul McCartney and Wings performed a song that would eventually be released as a single to radio in April, 1980.

The original version, recorded in studio, was a bit slower, McCartney's vocals, frankly, overproduced. But that "Coming Up" blazed up the charts in Great Britain. Herre in America, however, Columbia Records preferred the live version that ended up on the B-side of the "Coming Up" single release.

Columbia got the live version to radio, and even though he liked the studio version better, I suspect McCartney didn't mind when it became the final number one hit in the United States for Wings.

The song is also credited with playing a part in getting McCartney's former songwriting partner John Lennon back into the studio. The result of that was "Double Fantasy", the last piece of the Lennon legacy before the tragic events of December 8th, 1980. Also a Monday.

McCartney and Wings will join us two more times on our musical journey.  :)

Side Note: I tried several times as a young teenager to play 24 consecutive hours of music, pretending to be a DJ (I started "building" radio stations in my mind when I was like four years old. Long story.), and this would always be the song I played in the four minutes before the 24 hour period began. Sadly, I never made it. I never made it through the entire Jerry Lewis Labor Day MDA Telethon, either.  :(


No comments: